The Conventions of 2024: Part 4: New York Comic Con and Derpycon

Another month done, another set of conventions off the table. In a sudden repeat of what happened earlier in April this year, this month had two conventions on two back-to-back weekends. I personally didn’t mind too much, as my legs have gotten used to enduring long trots through big events compared to in the late 2010’s and 2022 (provided I have a chiropractor visit here and there), though in this case the events were much bigger that EMCon and Castle Point combined.

The two conventions in question are of course New York Comic Con and DerpyCon: Two events with very different themes and of wildly different sizes. Both took place in the final weekends of October: NYCC on the third weekend and DerpyCon on the fourth. Each year I typically make the former convention one of my big mandatory visits of each year, but the latter was an event that I had not attended since 2016. Since AnimeNYC became the center of my attention as the other big fall event of the year from 2017 onwards, it caused me to shelf Derpycon for eight years until the combo of countless leg excercises and AnimeNYC moving up two months into August to reconsider attending. Was it worth the year-long prep? Well, you’ll have to read on.

New York Comic Con is perhaps the quintessential convention experience. It’s the biggest show I attend each year and the one many smaller local comic conventions emulate the most when it comes to the kinds of media they feature inside. Since the show remains massively popular in today’s age thanks to the number of guests and panels it brings every year, I opted to attend the event on Thursday in order to avoid the massive crowds of Friday and Saturday that made journeying through the event’s Artist Alley cumbersome. In a way, the event went overall smoother than the year prior, since my plot to venture into Artist’s Alley first for four~five hours was effective in allowing me to hang and converse with the artists tabling without the worry of an over-congested Artist’s Alley. Though that came at the cost of being able to see the vendors’ area for an extended amount of time; which was clearly the bigger focus of the event for many with all the media giants setting up big elaborate booths and vendors selling off merchandise.

I arrived at the event at around 10:30 and, as mentioned, immediately dipped into the artist’s alley. The layout was pretty much 1:1 with last year, separating the artists into multiple isles comprised of both big-name professional comic artists, smaller hobbyist artists, and everything in-between. The lack of crowds congesting the alley, especially the A/B isle directly to the left of the entrance into the Artist’s Alley, made getting around much faster. The backs of the center isles were filled with professional artists whose tables were sponsored by larger organizations of artists, though of course my attention was drawn to the more independent artists that lined the front and sides of the Alley. The kind of artists that you would run into at any other comic or anime convention in the tri-state area. And well, the Artist Alley at NYCC this year did not disappoint. Many artists I had known for years tabled at the event and there was a massive variety of artists with differing art styles that, at least outside of the sponsored professional artists, there was no artist that drew even remotely alike another. The only kind of artist that was noticeably light in representation were the anime artists, and you can easily chalk that up to the existence of AnimeNYC two months prior for them to put their eggs into. Some artists even tabled both events.

After several hours in the artist’s alley, I made my way up to the vendors. Next to the special guests and certain panels, this is probably the main attraction of the event for many attendees. And for good reason too: the huge size of the Javits Center makes it real easy to bring in and assemble massive booths filled with attractions and, most importantly, shops to sell off merch to. And if you weren’t convinced from past New York Comic Cons that anime was being more and more integrated into general pop culture more and more with each passing year, look no further than here: Many of the booths that lined the east gates into the vendors were all connected to Japanese media companies or franchises in some way. Dragon Ball and One Piece had entire booths dedicated to themselves- each featuring their respective stars as enormous balloons towering over attendees. The various properties Bandai owned or created products for had entire sections at their booth, including Godzilla and a person dressed in a full-on Godzilla suit for the occasion. Gundam would have a while section to itself, and Viz Media and Crunchyroll, two corporations known for their contributions to manga and anime in the West, had booths as well.

But that doesn’t mean the Western-made media had no presence at this event, in fact it thrived quite well this year. Marvel came back with another booth featuring a giant stage in the middle of the vendor’s section, screening new previews of various Marvel properties and even having a cosplay contest at one point. The Nickelodeon booth had a giant SpongeBob display of the homes of the main trio in celebration of SpongeBob’s 25th anniversary. And being that the convention took place in the stomping grounds of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you bet the heroes in a half shell were all over the event—not only did they get a big booth all to themselves in the vendors, many artists in the Artist’s Alley sold art featuring the TMNT (particularly of the IDW comics’ continuity). Various indie artists and comic creators also promoted and sold off their own original comics, which I found myself purchasing quite a few as a means of supporting them and getting to experience the adventures of many cool characters at the comfort of my own home. Going into the vendors for the first time in the day would sort of take the rest of my time in the vendors off the rails, as I would spend part of the event searching for Straight Edge Comic, creator of Straight Edge and the Black Belt Adventure after stumbling upon a discarded business card right at the escalators. Unfortunately for me, there appeared to be no booths for the comic at the event and the official NYCC app made no mention of Straight Edge. In memoriam for my inability to find the people responsible for creating this story, I kept the business card on hand when I returned home.

After about 4 hours in the vendors, I said my goodbyes to the artist friends tabling in the premium artists section and returned to the artist’s alley to claim the last few commissions at the event and get in some last-minute chats. Since the Alley was disconnected from the vendors, the alley got to stay open an hour later, 8PM to be exact. That said, many artists would put up the tarps covering their booth and depart for the day at 7PM, so the final moments of the event became a mad dash to claim everything I could, say my final set of farewells, and get out before closing. Ultimately, I would leave NYCC with eleven commissions, the wild diversity of the artists carrying over into the big variety of character art I would receive, many of which I likely would only be able to get at other comic events like Cradle Con and Brooklyn Comic Con. The personal favorite of the set for me was a Genroy art I received from comic artist Jacob Chabot, since it took me back to my high school years when I first created Genroy and the other OG’s back in 2011. It also made me realize in hindsight that I should go back and give my older original characters more love, while still introducing and fleshing out newcomers and other underdeveloped ideas once I have a load off my back from all these events this year hogging up attention.

If you want to see the other commissions, I posted the full gallery onto my sister blog as per usual. Overall, this was a really fun and welcoming New York Comic Con. Going more quickly through the artist’s alley and keep my attention to only certain booths made the schedule go by without much trouble Compare and contrast AnimeNYC, where I found myself trapped in an overly large Artist’s Alley with too many artists to interact with in one spot, giving me little time to explore other parts of the event. In hindsight, the one aspect of NYCC I completely sidelines was the video gaming section down on the lower floor, but it didn’t really impress me enough at NYCC 2023 to bother to travel down again. Cosplay shots were also a no go at this event, but that doesn’t mean there were no good cosplays at the event. My mind was unfortunately too occupied with the vendors and artists to be able to take pics of cosplays.

Thankfully, I would get lots of those taken at my next event: DerpyCon 2024.

As I mentioned previously, DerpyCon has been around for quite some time. During my long absence from the event to focus on two bigger events, Derpycon would see itself relocate down to the Hyatt Regency in New Jersey’s New Brunswick. This new venue was a lot more compact and allowed for much quicker travel between event features, in addition to much better lighting in the artist’s alley. And after two conventions at the Javits Center, it was a breath of fresh air to visit a new venue. As for what kind of event the show is—you would assume it would be an event dedicated to cartoons or otherwise another general pop culture con due to being named after Derpy Hooves of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fame. And you would be partially correct; the show’s features leaned more towards anime and the show’s scale is very comparable to Castle Point Anime Convention in that regard, but go through cosplays and the booths in Artist’s Alley and you can see love for animation of all kinds even with the slight bias towards anime. This focus towards animation was also seen in the three special guest voice actors that were invited to the event, each of them having big roles in western media. (Sadly I didn’t go meet any of the guests due to lines for them piling up over the day and my lack of spare funds to put into their paid services towards the end)

Since the event was at a hotel, parking was fairly simple and I was able to walk right into the main event space through a door in the parking garage that conveniently led inside. It was a bit hard to find the main reception table at first but signing in was simple the moment I found it. Afterwards, I was left to roam the event to my leisure and… wow. It was surprising just how much of the typical convention features they were able to contain in a small venue. All the panel rooms were upstairs on the second floor, and the gaming room full of arcade and console setups (including a shocking number of retro game setups) could be found in the lower floor. The vendors and artists shared the same room and while it was fairly large, its size was around the same size as Castle Point Anime Convention’s entire artist alley, leading to only 1 and a half full isles of artists while the rest would be used by the vendors. Even with the lack of artists compared to other events (in fact this may be the second smallest artist’s alley next to EMCon), I got to interact with both some new and long-time artists from the area, including two that I consider good buddies and saw a combined total of three/four times this year alone. Unfortunately, for those looking forward to my post-event commission dumps on my sister blog, this event only resulted in one full commission. Every artist at the event was either a digital artist or a craftsperson, after all. Thus, I decided to use my money to make purchases in the vendors and artists, buying some early Christmas gifts of figures that intrigued me and some swag from one of the Artist Alley tables.

Adjacent to the vendors’ hall and artist’s alley was an enormous concert hall. Some audio would spill over into the vendors but thankfully it was very minor and pretty much nothing compared to how loud the main stage would get at CPAC in past years and the over-turned loudspeakers at Brooklyn Comic Con earlier this year. With only so much time at the event (and my sensitive hearing not helping much either), I didn’t travel inside and only caught glimpses as I passed by the rest of the venue. Partway through the day before the vendors and artists closed up shop at 6, the lines used for the special guest booths in the main area were repurposed into a big queue for a cosplay gala show and I watched as what felt like 150 different attendees in cosplay poured into the concert hall. And speaking of cosplays, by golly did I see a good haul of cosplays at this event—so much that I almost immediately started my set of Cosplay Photos after my first trip through the Artist’s Alley. In total, I managed to get 99 individual cosplay shots, all of which you can see here. Just the fact that I almost broke into triple digits was surprising, especially in an event with a much smaller amount of space compared to other events I attended. I didn’t keep track of what franchises got represented more this time around, but I did notice qiute a few for League of Legends as well as The Amazing Digital Circus.

One avenue that genuinely surprised me was the food. Since this event was not at a convention center (or in the case of the Cradle of Aviation, a museum), I got to order a real cheeseburger that was cooked in realtime. It took over half an hour to cook, but the end result was perhaps the most satisfying meal I had consumed at a convention. Typically, I would be forced into getting hot dogs at other venues as I have a very big distaste for fast food-quality hamburgers and the food sold at most food trucks or booths within parts of the buildings generally didn’t appeal to me. Maybe that'll change one year, especially in the case of if I return to Brooklyn Comic Con which lacks them altogether.

Once 6:00 PM finally hit, I finished up my goodbyes at Derpycon and took a stroll along the now mostly emptied main halls and the game room on the lower floor. The sun roof in the main area of the venue darkened significantly, leaving the room lit by only the lights on the first and second floor. I peeked back into the second floor and, while now mostly vacant this late into the day aside from some of the panel rooms and after-hours programing, a variety of booths that contained various ads and promotions for other conventions in New Jersey and Pennsylvania lined the balcony overlooking the entire first floor. It got me genuinely curious about conventions across the two states, given that my last proper visit to New Jersey before DerpyCon was for Castle Point Anime Convention all the way back in April. I’ll go into further detail when I discuss potential events for next year in the finale blog post since there might be a change or two the schedule. Anyways, with little else to do, I took a few final cosplay shots, checked out the gaming room one last time, and promptly departed the Hyatt Regency, overall satisfied with the event.

In the end, I’m glad I was able to visit Derpycon after a massive eight year gap and that my visit to NYCC the week prior didn’t make me too sore to attend. It’s certainly an event that I’d love to come back to next year, although the event’s Saturday being November 1st may cause some conflict with my usual Halloween schedule every year. Heck, even with the smaller Artist’s Alley, I may have gotten just as much entertainment out of this convention as I did at Castle Point and Cradle Con this year. It was that good, and the perfect size for an event this late into the year. And overall, October was a pretty good month for cons this year.

So with that all out of the way, the next post will be the finale of the conventions of 2024. Do be on the lookout for it, as I have quite a lot to say about the end of this year (AnimeNJ++ was this past weekend and Festival of Games… well, you’ll see) and what’s to come for the big year of 2025. 

Charlie Blast's Territory (N64) Game Rip

Happy Halloween, everyone! It seems like I had one more thing in me to assemble up, and it's something I've personally wanted to do for a very, very long time. And before you ask, no, there's not a single trick up my sleeve in this post.

But first, a small introduction. Back in the day, I was undoubtedly a Nintendo person, and the one to introduce me to Nintendo's lineage of consoles was my PopPop. He used to own a Nintendo 64 along with a few games, mainly Super Mario 64 and a small set of the system's few mature-themed games (such as Nuclear Strike 64). But one title that was in his possession caught my eye, and it was unlike anything I had ever seen up to that point.

Enter Charlie Blast's Territory, a 1999 block-sliding puzzle game from Kemco and Realtime Associates. The game stars demolition expert Charlie Blast and his task to travel across different themed islands and use a colorful roster of bombs at his disposal to chain together increasingly lengthy chains of explosions. Only by catching every single explosive in the level in one big combo is enough to destroy an island- leaving one bomb unscathed or getting Charlie caught in one of the explosions forces a restart of the level. I would never be able to get any further than Level 9 as a young kid, and with N64 games no longer being sold complete in boxes in my later years in elementary school thanks to the sixth generation having taken off, I never really had a chance to play the game on my own N64 and was only able to touch it when I visited my PopPop. Thankfully, used games would start being sold at various video game retailers of the era and one day after fourth grade, my mother would surprise me with a used copy of Charlie Blast's Territory. And then years later I found out the game was a partial conversion of Kemco's earlier PS1 title The Bombing Islands, starring their mascot character Kid Klown... And then I discovered years later that The Bombing Islands was loosely based on an old computer game from Europe known as Bombuzal.

That was quite the deep rabbit hole, huh? Anyways, in the early 2010's Charlie Blast's Territory was one of those games that didn't seem to catch on with retro game music rippers of the era due to its relative obscurity outside of N64 fan groups. And thus in around 2012 or 2013, I decided to take matters into my own hands and record the game music myself off of an emulator until I had all the level themes plus the title screen. Unfortunately, as with many of my unpublished pre-2020 music rips on this blog, the entire rip would become lost after the demise of my Macintosh's hard drive. And after re-recording a number of soundtracks I lost in the crash, I figured it was time to do the same to Charlie Blast's Territory. In this new and enhanced rip, you will find the title screen song, the five main level themes, one multiplayer-exclusive level theme, and the level win and level lose jingles.

And at long last, here is the link to download the album.

New Super Justin Bros. Character Pack - Now Live!

After several months of hard work, the New Super Justin Bros Character Pack (NSJBCP) is now officially live, and just in time for Halloween!

This will be the future home for all of the characters that I create for Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers and will be updated gradually as new racers are introduced. If you saw my previous post on the game, you might already know what to expect going forwards, but I'll provide some new and updated info now that the pack is finally available:

• As mentioned previously, Sonic and SEGA characters will be the stars and focal points of the new pack, and all characters will take a bit longer to get made since I want to ensure everyone gets as much polish and testing as possible.
• All characters will be available separately in addition to the full pack and will support up to three Rivals. Rivals can be base-game characters, other characters from the NSJBCP, protentional future racers, and existing community characters.
• Some characters will receive a dual release in both SRB2Kart and Ring Racers. Those that do will be available in the Super Justin Bros Character Pack for Kart in addition to the New Super Justin Bros Character Pack for Ring Racers.
• Original Characters will be released as part of a separate pack, available from the same page as the NSJBCP
• Followers will gradually be added over time as well, though for now the pack's earliest updates will be focused on introducing racers.
• New custom skincolors will accompany certain characters added to the pack. Each custom skincolor will also have a selectable inverse color. All colors will be designed for use on base-game characters as well.

I think that's everything I need to elaborate on for now, so head on over to the message boards and give the New Super Justin Bros. Character Pack a drive!

The Conventions of 2024: Part 3: Long Island Retro Gaming Expo and AnimeNYC

Well then… what an eventful month that was.

Starting off the blogpost, you may be wondering how the schedule ended up like this since if you were to follow my convention coverages from years past, normally AnimeNYC would be the final big event I would cover to close out the year. Well, in something of a curveball moment not long after the conclusion of AnimeNYC 2023, it was announced that AnimeNYC will be rescheduled from its usual timeslot of November to three months earlier in August, causing it to fall exactly two weeks after the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo. As you know, these two events are something of big deals for me as one is unlike any other event I attend and in the year and the other is easily the largest anime event in the tristate area. So to have them both not only in the same month, but quite close to one another, it’s been quite stressful on me since it meant I had to focus all of my time prepping for these two events and not being able to spend much of my extra funds on anything else that’s not a convention purchase.

With that said, it is time to finally cover August’s duo of conventions for the year, featuring the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo and AnimeNYC coming in swinging to close out a wild summer. Last time we visited the schedule we had just wrapped up Brooklyn Comic Con, an event that had lots to do and had a great roster of vendors and artists representing every different category of convention but fell slightly short of perfection due to some odd design choices and the relative lack of space to maneuver around the event and options for food. The event before that, Cradle Con, was a very solid all-around comic convention that went in hard on the comic theming and featured the return of many of my favorite artists in the local convention space.

Long Island Retro Gaming Expo was the first event of the month and this time, they returned bigger than ever. Taking everything from the past year and expanding it out with even more games to play and shops to buy from, the event would find itself with record attendance across all three days. A greater number of big-name special guests including hosts of gaming-focused Youtube channels and podcasts attended, some of them also being in various panels throughout the three days of the event.

Entering the museum converted into a retro gaming convention, viewers were greeted to the vendor’s hall where retro video games, consoles, and homemade goods were up for grabs. I personally went into the event looking for two games in particular to grab: Fighters’ Megamix on the Sega Saturn, and Gungrave on the Playstation 2. Alas, no booth in the vendor’s hall stocked either game, even amongst the hundreds of PS2 games at every booth. I did however come out of the event with a few games for other consoles (home-brews included) and I would have bought more were I not saving up for AnimeNYC in two weeks from then. Perhaps the biggest get from the event was a sealed copy of the Mega Man Wily Wars Collector’s Edition that has long gone out of print for several years. Gaming-themed books also populated the event and I found myself leaving the venue with three of them in tow, all sold by the special guests that set up in the vendors’ hall.

This year, the event went all out with a Sega Dreamcast theme for the console’s 25th anniversary. The entire third floor of the building was completely filled with playable Dreamcast consoles and banners that gave insight on the system’s history, the event guide and badges featured VMU’s, and you could even purchase VMU shells with the event’s logo that you could put real VMU parts inside. Unsurprisingly, there were more than just Dreamcast games across the event and one good look at the map would show all the themed sections returning from last year. The first floor’s main freeplay sections were once more separated into quadrants: Console Freeplay, PC Freeplay, The Museum, and Tournaments. Console Fereeplay remained the most like it did last year, playing retro games on period-correct CRT televisions but with different games and a small section devoted to the history of Tetris (the focus of 2023’s special third floor exhibit). PC Freeplay, meanwhile, managed to get a big glowup in the form of many of the computers present getting some mixture of running with a full or partial 90’s PC gaming setup. Not every game provided the full retro PC gaming experience but getting to play the likes of Jazz Jackrabbit on authentic hardware was a delight.

The Museum continued its quest to showcase rare and exotic gaming consoles, handhelds, and computers. There weren’t as many new additions when it came to consoles since the roster only got a few additions, but for computers the section deeper within the Museum that was previously only partially filled with retro computers was now fully stocked on every corner. Even if the computers lacked small pamphlets like the consoles did to give history on each machine, seeing the room covered toe-to-toe in computers was very satisfying. Adjacent to the Museum was the Pokélab, a Pokémon-themed room set in front of a lunar lander allowing you to trade for event-only Mythical Pokemon and transfer event items to old Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS cartridges. The Tournaments section located across from the Museum remained mostly intact, although the FGC group that organized most of the section in previous years did not return (to my knowledge), leading to the only modern fighting games being Street Fighter 6, Smash Ultimate, and Tekken 8. Personally, I consider the retro games better fitting for the event, using older entries in beloved fighting game series along the competitive modes in non-fighting games.

The second floor featured the return of the High Score Challenge, the event’s other big competitive attraction spanning many different consoles up to the Wii U, and Eon Gaming returned to feature console LAN games and tournaments, including a massive Mario Kart Double Dash tournament on Saturday. The second floor also featured an entire section dedicated to indie games on retro hardware (including a homemade game console!) and the Timeline exhibit returned again as the second floor’s signature attraction. The 2010’s were unfortunately not well-represented in this section, although to be fair the era only ended four years ago and the only consoles that would fit in the section thus far would probably be the 3DS and Wii U (the Wii U was present but it was running homebrew software (a port of Sonic Mania to be exact) and the backdrop and history pamphlet made for it labeled it as a 2000’s console). The event also has two arcades: the Hangar Arcade on the first floor and the Arcade Age exhibit on the second floor. The Hangar Arcade was a really cool Japanese-style arcade with many fighting games, puzzle games, SHMUPs, and rhythm games. The Arcade Age Exhibit was an American-style arcade that, unfortunately for this year, lacked a number the iconic and noteworthy arcade titles of the era and didn’t share much of any history or background on the games that were present. In short, it had great choices for arcade games and some standout picks but was done better in prior years of the expo.

If you wanted more videogame-adjacent entertainment, the musical performances and panels delivered. This time the musical performances were made far less obstructive than they were in prior events thanks to being set at lower volumes in the main room. One of the four groups would even perform inside the planetarium once panels wrapped up for the day. And speaking of panels, there were lots of them this year across the two panel rooms (one of them being the aforementioned planetarium) at the event. I thought I had seen where a third panel room could have been used somewhere in the venue but turns out it was being using as a staff and guest lounge. They would even bust out beer and alcohol once the vendors closed up shop at 7PM and let people purchase drinks. Drinks in front of many rare and valuable retro gaming consoles and hardware… I shiver up at the thought.

Overall, this was probably peak LIRetro for me. I attended both Friday and Saturday till late into the evening, enjoying the atmosphere, catching up with friends, and trying out some cool and forgotten retro games that even I was not familiar with. If you’re wondering where the artists and cosplays in this post were; I never associated LIRetro with having that strong of an artist’s alley, considering the size of the venue and catering more to vendors than artists. There were a few cosplays I quite liked, but not enough to build a large showcase of them at the event. Maybe 2025’s event will turn out enough cosplay photos to make a folder of them online. And speaking of future events I do have some thoughts on the Festival of Games, the winter holiday spinoff of LIRetro, but I’ll save them for a future post once I know if the event is happening or not. Especially since I still have one more event to cover in this post…

Two weeks later, I would attend AnimeNYC 2024, the seventh overall AnimeNYC and the sixth I would attend (having skipped 2021 for reasons that should be obvious considering what 2020 was like). By now, the event’s design and layout have been set in stone and the biggest difference this time around was the move from mid-November to towards the end of August. I had gotten accustomed to the event’s late Fall timeframe and aside from not having to pack and walk around the convention with a coat, it all felt very familiar to me. Of course, the only caveat with the timing was I didn’t get much of an opportunity to recover from two days of the Retro Gaming Expo and event prep ate into much of the free time I would have otherwise spent to finish up the last of my end-of-summer todo list before September hit and the days became shorter and colder.

As hinted at, the venue changed very little since the prior year. After spending two years confined to the northern side of the venue’s big vendor area, the Artist’s Alley moved back to the rear end behind all of the vendor booths and was spread out to fit a much bigger space as it did in 2019. And “bigger space” would be underselling just how massive the artist alley was this year: Looking at the map, I counted roughly 624 individual booths and with some of the booths being double booths, there could have been as many as 800 or so artists at this one event. All I can say is I ate exceptionally well that day at the cost of sacrificing time away from other parts of the event, and with the huge selection of artists all selling at the venue, I couldn’t hold longer chats with the artists that I could at Castle Point Anime convention, Cradle Con, and Brooklyn Comin Con. And with that many artists, it led to one of the biggest commission hauls of any in person event, even if I did miss two booths that were offering commissions and three of the artists I was able to reach and commission in time were not able to finish the commission on site. It was a very busy weekend, after all. And something about moving the event to the end of August might have had something to do with it.

Yup, just like LI Retro, AnimeNYC was able to host record attendance during the three day period of the event. And it was all likely a factor of the move to hosting the convention at the end of Summer instead of the end of Fall. With people not busy with studies and holiday prep, even more people were able to attend this time around, and the results showed when the final attendance numbers were revealed. Thankfully, it didn’t seem like there were as many crowds throughout the day, mostly because of the size of the venue being able to contain the bigger crowds of people in the event. Crowds still would gather at the event, particularly in busier parts of the vendors and artist’s areas and the main lobby, but at least people were still able to navigate around the event easily. If there was some part of the convention you wanted to go to, you usually were able to head there with no issue whatsoever. Compare NYCC, where pretty much most of the place is packed with attendees on almost every corner during the day, the main lobby and artist alley seeing the worst of it until the event dies down following the closure of the vendors and artists at 7/8 PM.

The number of panels were very numerous, with five different panel rooms of varying sizes plus two stages for live shows: the Main Stage and the Sakura Stage. Unfortunately, with my time through the Artist’s Alley taking up the majority of my focus, I was unable to attend neither panel I considered going to in the morning and afternoon of my visit. I was still thankfully able to get a good break in from the convention’s activities during an admittedly late 4PM lunch (it was typical convention junk food, as to be expected) but it made me recall back to when I was able to make it to one, sometimes two panels in 2018 and 2019 and was prevented from attending a panel in 2023 due to being similarly focused on the now ballooned in size artist’s alley. Maybe at DerpyCon and AnimeNJ++ later this year I’ll find a panel or two I’m interested in to discuss in the final two parts of this year’s convention coverages… just don’t expect me to pay any attention to the ones at NYCC as my attention will be laser focused on just vendors and artists.

Next to the panels was a very packed video gaming section, moving from a corner of the main floor down to where you would otherwise experience the Artist’s Alley at NYCC. It was full of arcade games, indie games, console games, and tabletop games. The arcade lineup, provided by Physic Drive, is pretty much what one would expect from an anime convention arcade: tons of Japanese rhythm games and candy cabinets with popular fighting games and other head-to-head titles loaded on. The candy cabinets in particular had a few machines I was very familiar with: Sonic the Fighters, Mr. Driller 2, Windjammers, and Tetris the Grand Master 3. Probably the big standout was F-Zero AX, the arcade counterpart to the beloved GameCube classic F-Zero GX, complete with its memory card port. The console games were also typical anime convention fare: lots and lots of fighting games on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch and you could probably make easy guesses on what games were loaded on the many systems up for play. I didn’t bat much of an eye at the indie games and the tabletop games; mostly since by then the event was fast approaching 9PM and I would be leaving, preventing me from sinking too much time into any of the games in the event halls (and also because I can just play/emulate everything back at home).

The cosplays at the event were just as strong as they usually are each year, and after giving Brooklyn Comic Con’s cosplays little attention and not bothering with the Retro Gaming Expo’s small number, I went wild with snapping pictures of cosplays I found within AnimeNYC and walked home with 146 different shots. Nowhere near close to the record, in part because of just how big the Artist’s Alley was this year, and I do not expect to break the record anytime soon unless I were to dedicate the entire event to taking pictures of cosplays. As for what “trends” I was able to spot amongst the cosplays I did take:

• One Piece was all over the event, breaking grounds as one of the top dogs of the Shonen anime world amongst the expected HoYoverse reps. I couldn’t turn a corner without seeing at least some OP cosplays and I believe I ran into at least five or six Zoro cosplayers at the event. 
• Speaking of HoYoverse, yup, they’re still alive and kicking. Plenty of cosplayers of the current trifecta of MiHoYo games (Genshin, Honkai, and Zenless) appeared to rep the scene. Though in the end I didn’t seem to see as many of them as I did in 2022 and 2023.
• One series that did get quite a noticeable amount of rep via cosplays was Final Fantasy. A Sephiroth was the first cosplay I took after stepping into the building and from there I would run into several Clouds, Tifas, a Barren Wallace, a Vincent Valentine, and a Reno. It was great to see some FFVII love out in the venue, especially following the launch of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth earlier this year.
• Next to One Piece in the “category of Shonen cosplays” was none other than the always-fabulous and mega-popular shonen franchise Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. With the franchise still riding the highs of the extremely successful anime adaptations since a decade ago. I believe I ran into two Jotaros, two Josukes, and a literal pair of DIO (said DIO being the second to last cosplays I snapped before exiting the vendors’—the actual last cosplay was a Raiden of Metal Gear Rising fame)
• My Hero Academia, Chainsaw Man, and Demon Slayer were still alive and kicking, and fellow “Big 3” members Dragon Ball and Bleach continued to get love in the form of cosplays. Not as much as I remember, considering just how much of a melting pot this event was when it came to franchise variety. Kaiju No. 8 also started gaining some traction amongst the cosplays.
• There was a small but noticeable number of League of Legends cosplays with Jinx being cosplayed by at least three people at the event, all repping different skins of hers in the process.
• I’m grouping the fighting game cosplays I saw at the event into one, but the FGC got some small but healthy representation at the event outside of the gaming area, including Guilty Gear’s Potemkin and Testament, Fatal Fury’s Terry, two Dante’s (per his inclusion in the MvC games) and gender swapped Morrigan and M.Bison towards the end of the day.
• The biggest surprise in terms of cosplays: Gurren Lagann. Yup, my favorite mecha anime still gets love at these events, including two different Simons, three Yoko Littlers (one of which was gendeerswapped), and one Kamina. Considering the series tended to get overshadowed by all the Shonen franchises, it was nice seeing a good number of cosplays of it.

And that was AnimeNYC. I may have preferred last year if only because it was easier to navigate around and my time wasn’t entirely consumed by Artist’s Alley, but this was still a great events with tons of what I love about anime conventions. It’ll still take some time to get used to the event’s new Summer setting, especially after so many years of traveling out in November to cap off the year with one big event. And speaking of big, I only see the event getting a lot bigger in the future… or scaling back a bit because of how much it grew in the span of a single year. That said, you can find all of the cosplays I snapped at the event and the commissions I scavenged for this year at the appropriate links.

And speaking of NYCC, next time we visit the convention coverage series in Part 4, I will be doing a dual-coverage of October events New York Comic Con 2024 and the grand return to Derpycon 2024. Part 5 will, likewise, close out the year with AnimeNJ++ in November plus some words in regards to Festival of Games whenever or not it happens this year.

To conclude today’s post, my sincere apologies if this one came quite late into the season. I was swamped in work on various projects big and small and wanted to really take my time on this entry in particular since both LIRetro and AnimeNYC mean a lot to me as a fan of anime and retro games. I promise the NYCC + DerpyCon entry won’t be this long of a read unless something were to happen at either event that I absolutely had to bring up.

Anyways, cya all later!

The Search for More Video Game Music

...Yeah, I had absolutely nothing ready for the blog in August considering I was prepping for and attending two big conventions during the month. More on them later in the month when I get some time in-between figuring out my plans for the season to give them the full scoop.

Anyways, I'm typing on my blog as we speak for one simple request. A while ago, I came across this music track that found its way into a few Chinese-made games, most notably a mobile game or two and a bootleg console. I tried searching around for where the song could have came from, probably some MMO from the region that got mega-huge in the mid 2000's and was since snatched up by game developers for whatever project they desired.

I did manage to get a clean recording of the song from the aforementioned bootleg console, but unfortunately it cuts out a few seconds into the song. I thought I'd post it anyways since how else will I provide context for the kind of song I'm searching for.

Link to the song

If you know of this song and/or what game it comes from, please let me know in the comments or through social media.

The Conventions of 2024: Part 2: Cradle Con and Brooklyn Comic Con

 (Yes, I swapped Temera and Wailmarin on the schedule since the former being a resident of New York made for a better fit)

Hello all and welcome to Part 2 of the big convention write-ups of the year of 2024. Last time, we discussed EMcon and Castle Point Anime Convention, two back-to-back different-sized events that I quite enjoyed. With Part 2, we’ll be taking a look at CradleCon and Brooklyn Comic Con, the events I attended in May and June respectively. Both of these events share the same mold in their focus on general pop culture, ala what New York Comic Con would gravitate to over time. And while Cradle Con is definitely rooted in its focus on being a comic convention, BKCC (not BYCC, as I foolishly tagged the event under on Twitter) had a much broader genre representation between comics, video games, and anime.

With the intro done, what better way to start than with CradleCon 2024? As one can tell by its title, this event is located at the Cradle of Aviation, a museum that also doubles as a convention center throughout most of the year. You may recognize this as the same location that hosts the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo (as well as its holiday spin-off, the Festival of Games) each year. It’s quite a versatile location in terms of what it can be suited up for, considering it has done both comic conventions and gaming conventions year by year. For this year, the layout remained much of the same: Vendors on the first floor, artists on the second. Of course with me being Mr. Artist Alley Guy I pretty much remained on the second floor for the grand majority of my visit, with occasional visits down to the lower flower to roam the vendors.

Since the event takes place on Long Island, many of my local artist friends that table at next to every local event on my schedule throughout the year were present and had tables at Cradle Con. Others I would recognize from the same event last year also attended and easily remembering me back when I came up to their booths to chat. As for the artist alley, it was an enjoyable one; Smaller than most of the other events I attend yearly (with only EMcon and the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo having smaller artist alleys) but still offering a decent chunk of artists to chat with and buy from. Being an event closely themed around comics, there were a lot of comics and comic-related art being sold across the vendors and the artists’ alleys. Obviously, comics are not exactly my thing, so I tend to skip on buying comics unless it’s an indie-published comic that has a cool hook that I enjoy or one done by a close friend that I’m very familiar with.

Unlike most of the events that I attend year-round, CradleCon closed its doors completely at 5 PM. It gave me enough time to make several rounds through the building, converse with various artists, and then get out with a good chunk of photos of the venue and commissions from the artists. Compared to the Retro Gaming Expo, not every space of the event was filled with something to do- it was mostly confined to the main lobby filled with vendors, the cafeteria area that was also filled with vendors, the second floor where all the artists resided, and a small section of the Gallery (the eastern section of the museum) that was used to host professional artists, celebrity guests, and cosplays. The venue’s third floor was completely vacant and only saw use as a hangout space away from the rest of the convention’s activity. There were a few panels but I didn’t recall the full schedule of them, other than some of them being held within the Planetarium Dome Theater which is probably the coolest room I’ve ever seen a panel be hosted inside. A massive number of seats and cool colorful lighting all go a long way to make a panel held in this room mesmerizing.

Overall, Cradle Con was pretty fun and I’m glad I got to attend and get out one more big event with the local comic artists of Long Island before summer would hit. I even got to treat myself to a snow cone from one of the food trucks outside before making my leave. Getting a healthy number of commissions was the cherry on top and you can see the complete set here. Sadly I did not take any cosplay photos at the event as I was focused on other parts of the event, and considering I took tons at Castle Point only a few weeks earlier, I wanted to give myself a break from snapping more.

You can see the full gallery of Cradle Con convention commissions here. Of course, the end of Cradle Con meant the beginning of preparations for another big convention. And that sounds like the perfect segway into…

Brooklyn Comic Con. Since AnimeNext pulled out for the year, I decided to attend a different event that was shifting over to an entirely new venue. The focus remained on general pop culture and most of the advertising was sure to include everything: Comics, Video games, Anime. Pretty much no fandom was left out in Brooklyn and everything got mostly equal focus. But alas, the event had a few minor mishaps and questionable design choices that I’ll touch on as we go:

Starting off the bright and cheerful Sunday morning, I accidentally arrived an hour and a half early, as I had gotten accustomed to conventions opening their doors at 10 AM. Brooklyn Comic Con’s intended opening was actually at 11:30 AM, and further issues occurring within the event’s venue caused it to stall for another hour and the line of attendees continuing to grow. I stood in line until around 12:30 when everything was all sorted out and attendees were allowed to enter, and the true fun began.

The Major R Owen’s Community Center is, truth be told a rather small venue to host a convention in. But as events like EMcon and Castle Point Anime Convention showed, you can still have a good functional event in a smaller venue. The venue was divided into two halves: One side was the vendors and artists all combined together into a single lineup, and the other was everything else and the kitchen sink.

The artists represented one of the most diverse lineups of artist types and styles but, surprisingly to me, focused more closely on anime art styles with some occasional comic influences. The vendors, by contrast, followed the comic convention’s main focus on comics. Only a few booths within the gallery of vendors would sell existing comics and goodies—the remaining set were dedicated to selling their original indie comics made from the ground up. Of course mainstream comics like Marvel and DC appeal to me only slightly, but something about indie comics and supporting artists by purchasing their comics makes me unable to resist purchasing said comics and taking them home. Especially in the Western convention scene where works featuring original characters are very hard sells to the attendees (just look at the state of anime convention artist alleys swimming on hot trends). And speaking of original creations I of course was able to snag several character commissions during the event, totaling up to eight commissions total.

What I was surprised to see with the artists at the event was a convention buddy that I met all the way back at ICon 2018, a now defunct Long Island-based convention. And of course a few other familiar faces within both the comic and anime convention scene attended and sold their art and.or comics. The vendors that didn’t specialize in original works featured things like the almost iconic “wall of vintage comics” that is at every comic convention and the video games and video game soundtracks at the Video Games New York booth. Said booth also played a few fun and recognizable tunes throughout the event, some of which I jammed to during my trots through the vendors and artists.

Most of the event’s general design was geared towards cosplay: About half of the attendees were in some form of outfit repping their favorite comic, anime, or game character. A few of them did catch my mind and I couldn’t resist starting a bite-sized collection of Cosplay Convention Shoots midway through the day. Cosplayers also received a special Cosplayer badge and some were allowed to enter the venue prior to opening. 4PM on both days featured the Cosplay Runway; a runway where cosplayers walked across a red carpet through the vendors and artist alley. Seeing all the cosplayers at the event all gather around in a central and easy to access spot was very welcoming, although it cut into an excursion through the vendors and artists as I had to navigate around all the cosplayers.

And then there was the other half of the venue, the “everything else” section. Featuring activities for people of all ages; there were tons of video games, a wrestling ring, a bouncy castle(…?), a playable Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit track, an inflatable obstacle course and slide, and a section for LARPing in cosplay and/or with foam weapons. With conventions like these being paid ticketed events that don’t attract many children, a few of the entertainment choices at BKCC felt, to keep things brief, unnecessary. Especially since the inflatable obstacle course took up most of the space in this area and ended up deflating only a few hours in. Then again, AnimeNYC last year had an entire section devoted to the military because they were sponsored by it even if a sponsor like that would more strongly fit NYCC. On a more positive note, the video gaming section was a solid addition as they usually are for any kind of event and it included a large number of current-day and retro games to try out. Seeing as I already own or have access to these games through other means and most of the games had people sitting at them all day, I unfortunately didn’t bother but otherwise was tempted to try out the small Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit track even in the instances where it had to be repeatedly managed by staff.

One thing the event sorely lacked was a good variety of food. Unlike other venues I’ve attended, there were no food courts inside the Major R Owen’s Community Center, leaving only the food trucks outside as the sole sources for grub mid-day. And the trucks that were chosen for the event were… not great; consisting of mostly exotic foreign food managed by staff that didn’t understand English. In fact, looking at the map of the venue that was posted, there were plans for even more food that didn’t show up. One truck in particular even refused to serve customers until 8 PM when the event’s main venue closed for the day. And if you had to step out to get food at any moment, you were forced back on line to keep the event’s venue manageable. And speaking of the venue, and as much as I enjoyed being there, it did have a few small but significant issues. Firstly, the loudspeakers used to play music and share announcements for panels and events through the day were all set too high, forcing me to speak very loudly or cover my ears when trying to speak to the artists and vendors at the event. And second, the sun’s position throughout the day shot a beam of bright sunlight through the west end of the event making me struggle to chat with the event’s many east-facing booths.

In spite of everything I had to point out, I had a great time at Brooklyn Comic Con 2024. Meeting up with artists I have not seen in a while and being introduced to and getting to chat with plenty of new artists from the local convention scene always makes for a good time. Especially in this rare kind of event that seemed to cater to every demographic possible: Comic books, Anime/Manga, Video Games, Retro Games, Fighting Games. Not a stone was left unturned. I never thought the fun would stop, but it did: Towards 8 PM, announcements that the event would close for the day became more frequent. I had two final commissions that I had to scramble and obtain before the venue closed in the event’s last ten minutes. The Video Games New York booth would really set the mood by playing one last song: Game Over from the Mario and Chill album by GameChops. I watched as the artist alley became a ghost town of closed-up vendor and artist booths and the venue’s internal lights went on. And so with no other options and no desire to join the event’s afterparty, I took a few last-minute shots of cosplays and the venue itself before making my leave.

Overall, the event was a solid good; about on par with most of the local events and some of the more medium-sized conventions. It had a great vendor hell and artist alley with tons of fandom representation and being able to meet and support tons of people is a strong part of any convention form me. Unfortunately, the excessively loud music loudspeaker audio, the lack of options for food, and some choices for entertainment that don’t exactly fit the event’s biggest target demographics. It reminded me of last year’s AnimeNext and some of the mishaps it also endured, although Brooklyn Comic Con’s flaws were not as significant nor easy to point out. For example, AnimeNext didn’t have background audio that made it impossible to communicate at times and had better options for food (read: not just foreign food), but Brooklyn Comic Con had all its panels, video gaming, and everything else under one roof and didn’t require a shuttle bus just to experience the whole event. And while both events have ways to improve, BKCC’s flaws were not glaring enough to completely kill the following year’s event. Meanwhile, AnimeNext’s reputation from having to cut costs and split its experiences between two separate venues let to it its show for this year and there’s strong hints that it will not be hosting another one in the future.

As for me, I’m currently unsure if I’ll be attending Brooklyn Comic Con 2025. Mostly since this year has been quite a busy one for me in more ways than one and I have not had much of a chance to sit back and take a chill with all the nonstop conventions, mobile game events that require me to get out of the house, various fighting game events and Games Done Quick, and my friend’s birthday party all occurring one after the other. While I am certainly up for returning to Brooklyn Comic Con after all the fun I experienced this year, everything that I listed above is making me think really hard about coming back next year. I won’t forget about BKCC and the many cool people and artists I met, but I don’t know if my love for the rest of the event is strong enough to want to come back.

With my full coverage on both CradleCon and Brooklyn Comic Con over, I’ll leave you with the commissions and cosplay shots of the event. Since EternalCon was canceled this year, the next events that I’ll cover will both take place next month: Long Island Retro Gaming Expo and the recently-rescheduled AnimeNYC.